Making It Personal

Photography by KARA ROSENLUND In celebration of her new book, It’s the Little Things, Susanna Salk schools domino on creating larger-than-life moments with small and cherished objects at home. “Consider adding textural, grown-up details to an otherwise all-white kitchen to go from…

In celebration of her new book, It’s the Little Things, Susanna Salk schools domino on creating larger-than-life moments with small and cherished objects at home.

“A fireplace mantel is an ideal place to display our collections, from indoors or out. It should always feel edited but never¬†too serious.” -designer Jason Bell

Photography by JOHN GRUEN

I love to play a game whenever I go to someone’s house before I have ever met them: Can the house introduce its owner so vividly that I could then identify that person in a crowded room without having seen a picture of them? Rooms when arranged and layered with details are the world’s best name tags. Whether they are carefully curated or chicly cramped, the constant should always be an eye toward displaying the beloved, the curious, and the deeply personal. Details can be luxurious: embroidered velvet backs of curtains that play delightful peek-a-boo, walls layered in sumptuous papers of fearless patterns. Or they can be practical: hardware as elegant as jewelry, bookshelves in colors that beckon. Details plants, paintings, or pillows can form a quiet still life inside a cozy nook awaiting discovery, or be showcased front and center for all to admire. Details aren’t just about showing your stuff. When chosen with care, they can create lush landscapes, where the eye delights in both the macro and the micro again and again. Details give a room a voice, and every piece should have its own story to tell, no matter how small.

Photography by SIMON UPTON

“When creating a visual landscape upon a piece of furniture, play with height, scale, and texture.” —designer Steven Johanknecht

Photography by ERIC PIASECKI

“Color is one of the most important details that we can give a room. It’s the very foundation from which the other details take their cues.” —designer Lorenzo Castillo and The Rug Company

Photography by MICHAEL ARNAUD

“Details should always feel very personal, like objects walked out of a family album.”-designer India Hicks

Photography by none

“It’s the Little Things: Creating Big Moments in Your Home Through the Stylish Small Stuff” by Susanna Salk for Rizzoli $45 domino.com/spring16 (available March 22)